Topical Guide 494
Mark Dorset
Food: “Leftovers”
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 4
ONE OF THE WOMEN from the academic group comes to their table, holding two dishes of food. […] Matthew has been expecting her. He has seen her moving around the room, trying to give the group’s surplus food away. […] Liz and Belinda […] have their heads together and are laughing like schoolgirl pals again, watching, while trying to appear not to watch, the big woman’s efforts.
“Oh, Jesus,” says Liz. “Get a load of this. She’s going to try to give it to the colonials.” […]
The colonials refuse the food, politely. When the woman goes away they put their heads together and begin whispering about her. Matthew sees their eyes dart in her direction, and he can imagine their conversation.
“Who on earth would want her leftovers?”
Albertine Gaudet, in Leaving Small’s Hotel:
“All your meals are provided, of course, and that includes midnight snacks. In a small refrigerator in the kitchen you will find ‘leftovers.’ We call them that, but I assure you that our chef makes these ‘leftovers’ fresh daily, specifically for snacking. I want to make it clear that although they resemble leftovers, they are deliberately made to resemble leftovers and are not actually left over from anything. (Some people have a very difficult time understanding this concept, which is why I’m explaining it, and I ask you please not to be offended by the explanation if you understood the concept before I began explaining it.) You may tiptoe from your room in the middle of the night to snack on these goodies—indeed you are encouraged to tiptoe from your room in the middle of the night to snack on these goodies, for if you do not, they will just sit there in the refrigerator and go uneaten, and by the next day they will actually have become leftovers, and then what would we do with them?”
Laughter and Ridicule: Attitudes Underlying
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 4
The academics go through some animated confusion over the check, gather their coats, and make their way out. As they leave, one of the hockey players makes a joke at their expense. Matthew, Liz, and Belinda can’t make it out, but when all the hockey players, American and Russian, laugh in the way that only young men who think they have the world by the balls laugh, Matthew understands.
“You hear that laughter?” asks Matthew.
“Are you kidding?” asks Belinda.
“What did they say?” asks Liz.
“Oh, I don’t know,” says Matthew. He doesn’t say what he wants to say, because it would diminish him in their eyes; he wants to say: “I mean, do you hear what kind of laughter that is? It’s cruel. It’s the cruel laughter of big, stupid guys, and it turns out to be international.”
The unnamed “anti-hero” [Dostoevsky’s term] in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground:
In our school everybody’s face seemed to acquire gradually a peculiarly stupid and degenerate expression. How many boys came to us handsome! In the course of a few years they had become revolting to look at. Even at sixteen I was morosely amazed at the triviality of their ideas and the stupidity of their pursuits, their games, and their talk. They had so little understanding of the most essential things, so little interest in the most inspiring subjects, that I could not help looking on them as my inferiors. […] Everything honorable, but humble and downtrodden, they greeted with disgraceful and unfeeling laughter. […] They were monstrously lewd. Even in this of course, there was mostly outward show and obviously artificial cynicism; youth and a certain freshness gleamed even through the vice; but even their freshness was unattractive, taking the form of a sort of childish naughtiness. I abominated them […]. They repaid me in my own coin, and made no secret of their loathing for me.
See also:
Food, Appetite for TG 56; Food, Chicken, Chicken versus Clams TG 44; Food: as Significant Element of a Remembered Incident and Its Literary Reproduction TG 34; Salami TG 135; Food: Preferences: Chicken versus Clams TG 155; Food: In Popular Culture TG 155; Food: International Cuisines in Translation: Chinese: Chow Mein TG 400; Food: Kartoffelklösse TG 367; Food: Aïoli, Chocolate Decadence TG 424; Food: Artificial TG 460; Cooking TG 463; Food and Drink: Kir Royale, Fusilli Bolognese TG 469; Cultural Differences in Styles, Methods, and Etiquette of Eating TG 492
Laughter TG 29
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